i have mentioned him twice before (way back in
2013 and again in
2014).
for the last few years, st. louis has spooled up a bit of an indie game thing. enough so that folks around the country were noticing it. enough so that a film studio in california sent a crew out here to make a documentary about it. as the film team began their work interviewing the known studios they ended each interview by asking the dev shops if there is anyone in particular they should talk with. all of them unanimously said "the coster boys over at butterscotch". after repeated recommendations, the movie men reached out and scheduled a twenty minute informational session. that meeting lasted three hours.
the next day the film crew re-contacted the coster boys and (1) thanked them for their time and (2) asked if they might be interested in having a feature length film done about their story. they said yes. well, technically they said, "heck yes" turning the typically two syllable phrase, somehow, into a five syllable verbal roller coaster because that is just what they do in life.
the documentary just came out. here are some related matters:
today i'm going to talk about someone else's list: famous year-end list pusher TIME Magazine. this year i have the honor of knowing one of the people on one of their lists. a dear friend of mine produced a game that made TIMEs list of TOP 10 GAMES OF 2016 (#7). the game is called crashlands.
for those who know my friend's story know that this is an extra-poignant victory on numerous levels. in short, my friend got sent through life's wringer being told at the mature age of 24 that the odds of him being alive in a year's time were quite bleak. hell, i think there was a time they said if he was alive in a month, it would be rather miraculous. if you've ever seen first-hand a greater example of tragedy, devastation, spirit, strength, resilience and perseverance i would deem you a most-fortunate individual as witnessing this young man's ordeal changed me in no small way.
for those of you who don't know my friend's story, here's an abbreviated version of the crashlands saga (in list form):
sam graduated college and started making kooky ios games with his brother, seth (e.g. piloting a rocket ship with occasionally working controls through an asteroid belt)
sam and seth, working as butterscotcth shenanigans, saw modest but growing success with their early games.
out of nowhere the crazily-healthy sam was told he had stage 4 cancer. the day before he thought he was coming down with a cold. three days before he beat his also crazily-healthy brother seth in a three-mile footrace.
it was bad. all very bad.
modern medicine met super-human samuel coster and a chance, albeit a meager one, was found.
in the middle of the multi-month, in-hospital treatment sam said to seth, "i don't want the last game i make before i die to be about a sloth riding a motorcycle through the jungle."
the next day the first crashlands neuron was fired.
months later sam rang the bell and walked out of the cancer treatment ward, a free and cured man.
crashlands development began in earnest and began to take for-real shape over the next year.
the cancer returned. bigger and bolder.
a half-year medical battle was waged, again.
sam rang that bell, reserved for few, a second time.
crashland's work resumed.
after more than two years of effort, and two cancer treatments, including a bone-marrow transplant, the game was released.
as for how crashlands did, its first week out it sat right below minecraft as the most popular iPad game, ready to be the first to knock Minecraft off the #1 perch it held for more than a year. while they never succeeded in taking the pole position, assuming the second spot in today's flood of games is a remarkable feat in itself.
and it also did well enough for time magazine to name it a top ten game of 2016 which is representative of the popular and commercial success it saw.
and lastly, if you're wondering what a kooky ios game looks and sounds like, get a taste of the coster boys work and style below. the voice you hear is sam's.
oh, and there's also a documentary coming out about all of this. the last i heard it is scheduled for release on january 21st, 2017
one last thing. regarding the second round of treatment sam went through. to erradicate the cancer, they, the doctors, had to, essentially, kill him, sam, to kill the cancer that re-invaded his body. when both were dead or in sam's case, walked right to the door of death, the doctors would attempt to nurse him, and just him and not the cancer, back to a healthy state, which they were astonishly able to do. since watching sam shoulder that hell-wrought wildcard from life's deck, i've never looked at another of my "trials" the same.
speaking of food (yesterday), the fiancé of a good friend of mine just started documenting her nurturing her newfound love of food and food-making. and, it doesn't take long to see that her style of 'documentation' is a bit richer and deeper than most folks form of documentation.
I think the relationship between food and our bodies is magical. One moment you can be looking at the apple in your hand, and the very next it is inside of you, becoming part of you - your cells, your bones, your heart, your brain.
and her instagram page should come with a full-on warning as i first looked in on it before bed and can tell you that that is a wicked kind of mistake.
https://instagram.com/diana.zeng
and a few days after seeing this alex caught her fiance, and my friend, super-sam, slipping something into our mail slot. upon opening the door and surprising him he confessed that he was dropping off a chocolate bar he just made for us to try out. later, when opening it up for the family to try, i found a personalized note on the wrapper's backside (you're not going to get that with hershey!!!) part of which said:
I recently began making chocolate from scratch. It's a 3 ingredient recipe. This has a tiny bit of cayenne pepper and is a bit melty to the touch. I'm working on the latter issue.
There's also a mustache emblazoned on the back. Because why not!?
what follows is a talk my friend sam gave at a gave developer microtalk event. the talks of the night, expectedly, dealt with coding and development and the act of creating. mercifully batting cleanup, sam's talk, generically lableled PROCESS, blew the lid off the tenth floor of a twenty-five story building.
I still have a viola, purchased in a sprint of optimism two year...
our last family act of the summer was to have a celebratory "sam-survived-cancer" (rel) dinner complete with porterhouse steaks, giant potatoes, fresh corn from sam's family farm in iowa all chased by cookies, ice cream and cup cakes. there's few things sweeter than appropriate decadence.
at 9:30 (or at the end of the third hour of the dinner) and in the middle of a rich conversation about tips, tricks and lessons of growing up (mostly for bella's studious edification) but after her moving thankful about sam and diana, marty pushed her chair back, stood up and said,
as much as i hate to leave, i start work tomorrow and fear i need to get to bed if i hope to be worth anything in the morning. and i guess this also ends our best summer ever.
her final words 'best summer ever' came with oprah like fervor on free stuff day. i and the children repeated her calls of best summer ever and the kids came forward with big smiles, hugging her. en masse the group looked like a sporting team that just played their last game of the season and were ending their run together, never again to field the court in that exact complement. in many respects, this metaphor aptly describes us as we will never again enjoy a summer with a 13, 11, and 7 year old. given this magical age-set, we enjoyed a rare time together full of many things, such as:
marty not working (a facet of life we will never again take for granted since her return in 2012).
sleeping in (and it's counter-part, staying up late)
roller-blading (at rollercade and on our neighborhood's newly paved streets)
beach vacations with marty's mom and siblings (to celebrate mama nat's 80th)
minecraft-marathons (other marathons include xmen, star trek and x-files)
trampolining (a gift from our newly departed neighbors)
sleeping on the trampoline (a stellar marty idea and which saw a 5-night run)
watching blairwitch on the trampoline + sleeping the night on the trampoline (bella and i only)
group reading (both from books, kindle and audio)
monopoly (the real-one, no more of that monopoly junior bullshit - thanks to marty's brother mike)
eating on the porch (we've evolved to setting a table out there)
movie nights (one even at a drive-in, front playground included--which anthony came back soaking wet from)
bike rides (my biking regimen is nearly back to pre-kid form)
introducing my family to the great world of true, professional comedy (starting with bill cosby)
walking to a vp fair concert in forest park (please move it to forest park every year)
closeness
calmness
laughter
smiles
family
health
marty commented that a big difference maker this year was the kids, all of the kids, are now old enough where they can mostly run their own games and we have fully entered that next phase of parenthood where we have more mutually interactive relationships. for me, it is the last six items on the list that make for the core ingredients of great times. marty's summers-off job is what allows for great quantities of this and her working the other nine months of the year, accentuates their importance. at the start of the summer anthony asked me why i didn't get summers off like mom. i told him that mom had a special sort of job that allowed for that but that also, when mom has summer break, so do i, given that she essentially takes all of my chores on (e.g. dishes!!!) during these months and making my time equally relaxing and special.
but placing an active emphasis on those bottom six is key:
by making attentive time for our kids.
by trying to run a non-frenetic home.
by ensuring everyone has laughed every day (tickling a human does wonders for that).
by breaking a funk by forcing an agitated human to smile (fart jokes and actual farts can distract young boys from a foul mood).
by that so often taken-for-granted human need, to know you are loved. it's one of those few, rare things you can never get enough of. so make sure you kiss and touch and wink and smile at someone you love today.
and possibly most importantly, by acknowledging daily that there are only two kinds of health—there is the health you have before you are told you have a life-threatening illness and there is the health you have after you are told you have a life-threatening illness—and appreciating every day you and yours spend on light-minded side of the fence (because when you are placed on the other side of the fence, it is all consuming to you and those who care about you).
so while i'm sad to be writing about the end of the best summer ever, i'm thankful to be able to healthily say we just had the "best summer ever" and look forward to trying to top it is subsequent years.
i just got tunred onto this ted video (by super-sam). i have no idea how i haven't seen it before now as it looks to have been out a few years (7 million plus views long at least). what a presenter! what a delivery! what a message! super strong all around. i watched it last night with marty and bella. when he talked about our need to stop teaching to the average and start raising the average, marty shouted and clapped as if she were in the original auditorium. when he talked about the ingredients to a healthy day (e.g. gratitudes, journaling, exercise, meditation, targeted kindness) bella backed away from me a little bit as she knows these are part of the metrics i track everyday. she knows this well because she has mocked me several times for my little LIFE spreadsheet i'm often found to be obsessively pouring over, by her telling, like gollum over his precious. obviously, i would like to describe it differently but it is close enough to the mark i'm left a mildly impotent to paint a more reasonable picture.
my young friend that recently shouldered a cancer diagnosis goes in for his final treatment this afternoon. after that, all involved expect to place him in the 'in full remission' category. but as they say, once a survivor, always a survivor which means the big C knows where you live and you'll never again live without the fear of opening the door and seeing its grim face staring back at you.
in our most recent coffee outing, which was our first to come in under four hours, he spoke of the positive impacts this experience has had on his life. the first thing he said, in example, is he could sit in this chair, stare out this window and see the wonder and beauty of the slush-filled road and its surroundings, and he could do so for hours without getting bored of it. i asked him if he thought the feeling would ever go away. he said he could see it subsiding in time but doubted it would ever leave fully.
he then spoke of a new ritual he has adopted. he now greets mornings with a new respect and gratitude. the first thing he does after waking is not go back to sleep as he would in the past (i mean the guy is 23 and fresh out of college). the second thing he does is walk through his apartment and slide each sun-blocking curtain open wide, letting the sunlight flood each room. third he does some sort of full-body stretch. lastly, he makes his bed. once that is done he begins his day with an appreciation few hold.
i think i've discussed how in recent years i've converted to being a morning guy. my only personal sadness is i didn't do it decades earlier. already, i have my own set of rituals i partake in the morning, rituals meant to prepare for and give thanks to the day ahead but in hearing sam describe his morning routine, i see my own practice lacks the reverence i feel in sam's approach. i'm left wondering if the only way to enter our days with like gratitude is to have been part of a medical guessing game of how likely it is you will be around for the planet's sunrise this time next year.
a young friend of mine was recently diagnosed with cancer. it arrived with a suddeness and ferocity that is hard to comprehend, let alone understand. the manner in which this young man, sam, has shouldered this dark card in his deck is as hard to comprehend as the event itself. i have twenty years of life experience over this fellow and even had the privilege of once calling myself his teacher, and he has faced this moment with a maturity and courage i don't think i've ever witnessed first-hand, like ever. suffice it to say i often feel as though i'm the one in the auditorium looking up at him standing tall and confident at the lecturn. to give you a taste of this young man, i share his latest broadcast from his company web-site:
When I got my cancer diagnosis in November I was completely blindsided. I went in on a Friday afternoon to get a lumpy piece of my chest checked out and the doc, calm as a hurricane eye, stepped back from the table and crossed his hands.
"You're...how old?"
"I'm 23."
"This is going to... sound strange. I'm nearly certain that this is cancer. You'll need to get it cut out as soon as possible."
I went out to my car and had an earthshattering bawlfest that lasted a brief 4 minutes. Then I called my brother Seth, the programming half of our studio.
We are a two-man team, doing everything from inception to launch on the games we make. In telling him about the diagnosis I admitted I was terrified that this cancer would take our fledgling indie studio and throw it under the ground, as it may throw me. Seth reassured me and became my chauffeur for the next week as we went up to Iowa from St. Louis to do surgery, get the diagnosis complete, and figure out treatment.
It was Stage 4 lymphoma. It was on my spleen, my liver, my pelvis, my entire lymph system. The docs at the time said it might even be in my spinal fluid. A PET scan showed that my insides, rather than consisting of nice fleshy pinkness, were a coating of tumor. Despite how aggressive the cancer was, I was given a 65%-ish cure rate. Chemo was to begin the next week before I decided to up and die from tumor load.
The two weeks between diagnosis and treatment was a true whirlwind of activity and emotion. It wasn't until after I received my first chemo infusion that my anxiety settled and Seth and I sat down to begin again on our project at the time, Extreme Slothcycling.
As we began to plan a wry feeling started bubbling up from my chest. Something about this was wrong. Hysterically wrong. I interrupted Seth as he was in mid marker-swing across the whiteboard.
"Seth. I don't want Extreme Slothcycling to be the last game I make before I die."
you can follow the adventure, and get plugged into their next game which my alex is feverishly awaiting, at their website butterscotch shenanigans.
were i to use twitter i would not only be brief in characters (as mandated by them) i'd also be brief in contributions (as mandated by myself). after some thought, i've concluded my one and only contribution to the twitter morass would be the following.
in life, always:
1. act with respect.
2. make mature choices.
honor those and you will sleep well and hit life's end line content and grinning.
the above text is taken near verbatim from an email exchange with a former student, who is now graduated and i need to just start calling a friend given our ongoing relationship. he and i have shared two lunches recently. the first to celebrate a new responsibility given to him at the dream job he secured six months ago. the second lunch, just a few weeks later, focused on how he could depart the company. it turns out the owner, who at first seemed to be a warm and patronly mentor is mildly, but not quietly, deranged. when sam explained what had gone on, i expressed surprise that he hadn't left already. one week after the second lunch i received an early morning email from sam announcing his plan to put an end to the crazy job this day. usually i'm not a spry mail responder (like, that happens at nine, ya know) but given the import of the moment, i took a minute to dash off a quick reply, hence the brevity of the message. the only bit removed involves a statement that no matter how the world around you (e.g. shitheel boss) behaves make sure to conduct yourself with grace and aplomb.
thankfuls. thankfuls are something we (try to) do at the beginning of our dinners. this is where we go around the table in a very casual manner and while plates are being filled and everyone in turn names a thing or two they are thankful for. sometimes there are lapses in this ritual, surely, but inevitably someone in the family pulls us out by making the observation that it's been awhile since we...
sam, we fear your work is a little dark for us. i'm sorry.
a former student of mine, super-sam, recently dropped in for dinner with us. as the adult conversation hit its stride the kids tuned out of the boring side of the table and chatted and goofed among themselves. this time though, my guest, caught the kids ears when he said he was interviewing for a job with a game development company. surprising everyone at the table, after this comment was made, alex spoke up interrupting sam and asked what he just said. sam repeated his hope and intention to get a job making video games. to this alex started asking sam if he's heard of many of the games alex has been playing. it was a hit and miss list. in time the conversation moved on.
a few days later alex handed me a letter. i thanked him and started opening it thinking it was another one for me. sensing my mistake alex said, "it's not for you dad. it's for that boy, that boy that is going to make games. it is some ideas morgan and i had of games he can make." sam, who went on to get the job, hasn't even been assigned a desk yet and already has a creative team doing his bidding. truth told, i expected no less.
firstly, alex is not good with names. he just calls most people who visit our house "that boy" or "that girl" so that he put a male name in that spot at all is a bit surprising. marty caught the mistake and had him fix it, but he only corrected the name on the outside of the envelope where it said "opin". additionally, you can't expect the creatives to have to bother with unimportant things like their boss or client's name. they have more pressing neurons to tend to. and speaking of creativity, i'm not sure if the world is ready for exploding babies yet but if it is, with the insight shared in this napkin pitch, sam may get the jump on the market. the letter transcribed and corrected follows:
hi david. i want to tell you me and my friend morgan made up two funny games. bablyliss war and babies vs parents. in bablyliss war there are buildings and baby guns and baby swords or nothing (meaning they would punch) will fight against ninjas, armies, aliens, wizards and people with swords. and babies vs parents is just like plants versus zombies.
on the second game idea, i'd guess they either ran out of creative steam or morgan's mom called and said it was dinnertime.
